Re: North Korea in context

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 24 Apr 2000, Michael Hoover wrote:

> SK's post-1960s economy (hardly model of free market capitalism given
> preponderant role of state in economic management) benefitted from
> earlier period of massive US & UN aid used to run country throughout
> 1950s, US & Japanese technology transfers that began in 1960s,
> and preferential access to US markets in 1970s.

Japan and the US have never been generous about forking over technology to
3rd world countries.  Korea had to pay for the tech, reverse-engineer
stuff, or simply swipe what it could. Alice Amsden notes that Korean
companies frequently hired retired Japanese engineers in order to figure
out Japanese production processes. Korea boomed because its economy
*learned* as it earned -- absorbing knowledge, info, training etc. like a
sponge, sending lots of students to get a world-class education in First
World universities, and stressing education as a means of upwards
mobility. This knowledge-based proletariat subsequently organized unions
and, over a period of years, smashed the South Korean dictatorship to
pieces, achievements we ought to celebrate. The dialectic isn't a true
dialectic without its subjective side, right?

-- Dennis